Bold as Sunlight
by Khrysalis
Summary: Raised in slavery and isolation, Sanosuke might have become cruel and ruthless. But Kenshin showed him compassion and loyalty. He might have learned cowardice, but Kenshin taught him courage. He'd never have known the love of family, but Kenshin became his brother. Theirs is a land of turmoil. Sano may have to finish what Kenshin started, and one lifetime may not be enough. AU
1. Prologue

Prologue

Their beginning, Sanosuke remembered, was cold and comfortless.

Kenshin could never be persuaded to talk about those early days. Perhaps they were worse than even Sano recalled, best forgotten except for skills gained, lessons learned. And perhaps a few good, unstained days, good memories of bold sunlight and color that reached them from far away, on the wings of a wandering butterfly or a fleeting rainbow.

Or maybe they weren't so unstained after all, since it was hard to disconnect the good memories from the foul recollections of seeing the colorful wings torn apart by the savage hands of the older boys, or sunk to his hands and knees in the churned mud of the fields, too busy to look up at the rainbow.

But far more difficult than this was the way that every time they tried to speak of childhood, their jaws grew tighter and their tongues curled upon themselves. The old conditioning would come back to them. Then there was always the familiar silence, thick and solid and enveloping like an old cloak that would not be cast away.

It was not magic or any sort of enchantment—Sano tried not to believe such things, at times unsuccessfully—but instead just something so drilled, so beaten and starved and ground into them that it was almost impossible to let go.

 _Almost_ impossible. Both Sanosuke and Kenshin had strong, insurmountable wills. Through those memories that held them fast, they were hard and unmovable, like stones. Especially Kenshin. Kenshin couldn't be bent or broken, couldn't be corrupted.

Not even in death.

The tomb was cold, comfortless, like the past. And now, perhaps, like the future. Perhaps being there, in the frozen home of the dead, was why Sano's thoughts wandered into the past. Or maybe it was simply the way the end brought to mind the beginning.

He had brought a lantern with him into the tomb. It burned its oil, strong and steady. He could see the shadows swaying where Kenshin lay atop stone. He was dressed in black and white, and Sano found it absolutely ridiculous that only at his _death_ Kenshin was clothed in garments that were actually tailored to fit him. No too-big sleeves or overlong pants to trip him up. Now, when it didn't matter. When it didn't do him any good.

Just another mark on Sano's heart, he knew. Fate hated him. It always did. Otherwise something, anything in his life might have actually been fair. From birth until this very moment. Something. Anything.

An attendant came, appearing as merely a silhouette at the entrance to the tomb. It was midwinter. Snow was thick on the ground, but it was also a shockingly sunny day. Sunlight glinted blindingly off the white of the ground outside, the snow broken only by the tracks made by the attendant. Sano had been in the tomb since before the last snow; he had no tracks to show where he had come from.

"Sanosuke-sama? Yukishiro Tomoe-sama is here."

Jaw clenching at the sound of Tomoe's name, Sanosuke ignored the attendant for the moment. He took Kenshin's hand. It was cold as ice and the joints were no longer supple. It took effort to intertwine Kenshin's fingers with his own.

Sano closed his eyes, and found his very first memory just behind his eyelids.

He was two years old. Kenshin was eleven. Sano held on to Kenshin's hand, looking down at his tiny, bare feet as Kenshin helped him across a stream, hopping the slippery stepping stones…

On his knees, in the present, Sano pressed his forehead against Kenshin's temple and remained there a moment, while the attendant waited in silence a respectful distance away. Sano gave Kenshin's hand one last squeeze, knowing it would be the last time he would be able to do it. Then he stood, his own body mostly frozen with cold, and followed the attendant out.

There was a lot of responsibility in the palace not far from the graveyard that Sanosuke did not want. A position of power that _Kenshin_ had won, but had also not wanted. In an instant, Sano might have turned on his heel and walked away from it all, but there was still a mission. Still something Kenshin had been trying to do. If he could, Sano would try to see it through…

Tomoe was waiting inside.

She was a beautiful woman to even the most disimpassioned observer. Her hair was long and bound in a pretty style, but also with a simplicity that suggested it was tied back simply to be kept out of her way. Her eyes were dark, large. Features set in constant solemnity. Her clothes were simple of style, but fine in material.

Sanosuke _despised_ her.

He had not hated her before this moment. Not really. He had been angry and had mildly disliked her for other reasons in the recent past, but had not thought of her enough to consider her part in Kenshin's death in the here and now. He closed his eyes again and remembered the heat of Kenshin's blood, soaking into his clothes, the sharp expression of betrayal in his wide violet eyes as he held onto Sano for just another moment—the last moment—of being on his feet, and able to look on this woman, Tomoe, and the man she clung to, with a sword held between them all that dripped with Kenshin's blood.

Sano thought he should have hated Kiyosato more…and found that he didn't. Perhaps it was because Kiyosato would—in one way or another—pay for what he had done, and Tomoe probably would not. Not in the way she deserved.

Crude sayings came to mind. The urge to curse her was strong. Sanosuke's self-control was only stronger than this urge because of a promise. A promise to his big brother, his only family. A promise to Kenshin.

Still, he could not bring himself to think he was being polite or lenient because he thought she deserved it. "I hate you," he said bluntly. "Down to your frosty guts and that chunk of ice you use as a heart."

She accepted the comment, lips softening slightly. Sano couldn't have considered it then, but later he would suppose that she didn't blame him for the way he felt.

"This was not my intention," she said.

Sanosuke waited several heartbeats, but she said nothing else.

"Is that all?" His words were meant to be sharp, but they came out like rolling thunder. "That's it? You just came here to tell me you didn't mean for it to happen?"

She remained silent. If Sano noticed that her eyes seemed just a little sadder, he rejected the notion.

"You're not sorry at all," he stated, not caring in the least how his voice began to grow unsteady.

"I never intended—"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time. And I remember something Kenshin always used to tell me: intentions don't mean _anything_. It's what you _do_ that matters, what you _do_ that affects things, you cold—"

"I never wanted him to die."

" _Shut up_!"

She fell to silence, though probably more because she had nothing else prepared to say than because of Sano's anger. His temper threatened to overwhelm him and he shut his eyes tightly.

 _Tree roots_ , came Kenshin's words. Not his voice, but words drawn into the air with his hands, softer and more childlike in a memory from a long time ago. _Imagine you are a tree with roots. Your strength can't be carried by your anger to places you'll regret if your strength is like a great oak tree, holding to the inside of the earth._

He opened his eyes again, no better off than before. The memory brought him no peace or comfort, only the grim realization that he had somehow become much more obedient to his brother now that he was dead.

He looked at Tomoe. "He loved you," he said, voice hoarse. "He wouldn't have forced you to do anything you didn't want to."

"You're too young to understand."

Sanosuke was nineteen, twelve full years younger than the woman standing before him. Of all the things he had to face in this wretched moment in time, being called a child by her was not one he was prepared to deal with.

"You're the one who doesn't understand. You didn't know anything about him at all."

"I know he killed my brother."

Silence engulfed Sano, more childhood memory gripping him in a stranglehold. His tongue betrayed itself, his hands coming up of their own accord to draw in the air his native language, all that his frozen mind could muster. Then he stopped, with one hand pointing at her, and the other pointing at himself. How little _she_ understood. How very, very little.

There had been a time that what Kenshin knew that Tomoe didn't had endeared her to him.

And with that thought, Sano felt his heart break all over again.


	2. Chapter 1

1

The Master of the House had an appearance that struck terror into the hearts of anyone who saw him, including the young boys under his care. _Especially_ the young boys under his care.

His body was covered in white cloth wrap that showed no skin, knee-length boots, and matching black gloves. He was draped in a crimson cloak, the hood drawn over his head and, worst of all, a featureless white mask always covered his face. Only his eyes, which were a muddy green with flecks of red, could be seen to prove that he was human beneath the demonic attire.

He was only called the Master of the House. If he had any other name, Sano would never know it.

From the ages of two to thirteen the House, the Mountain and the Wall were all Sanosuke knew. The mountain was owned by the Master. It was not the tallest of mountains, but the land was rich with life. Vast woods surrounded and covered it, the trees unmolested by man.

There was only one house— _the_ House—on the mountain, and it was an enormous place. Ancient, and meant to last, made from stones of the very mountain itself. The inside was sectioned off into several closed rooms meant for storing and three open rooms meant for sleeping. There was a very long hall with two fire pits where in the cold season the boys who lived there would huddle as close to the fires as they could and as far away from the Master of the House as possible.

There was also a great Wall built all around the House and farmstead. As old as the House, it too was built from the body of the mountain. It was high and sheer. There was one double-gate, made of thick wood and sealed with three heavy locks that required three separate keys to open. It was far from the House, and even from the field, so that those who lived there seldom really saw it. But they knew it was there. It kept the boys locked in and all others locked out.

If one was feeling kind, or maybe just literal, one would call the place a sort of home for foundlings. True, it was filled with young orphaned boys. The Master harvested them from orphanages or plucked them from the streets of nearby cities and bought them on the summer slave markets each year. Each boy—with very few exceptions—was always the age of two or younger. After thirteen long years of being raised on the mountain, within the Wall, every boy—with very few exceptions—was taken off the mountain and sold again in the same summer slave market he might have been bought from all those years earlier.

One thing was certain: boys who were brought from the Mountain sold first on the market, and for the highest price.

Sanosuke was almost two years old when he was brought here. The outside world would remain a blankness in his memory. If he had a family, he knew nothing about them. Where he was before he was taken by the Master he could not know. As far as he was concerned, that world on the mountain, behind the Wall, was where his life began.

He couldn't be sure what he might have become had Kenshin not been there.

In honesty, Sanosuke would likely have thrived even without him. He would not have been as kind or as thoughtful or as loyal as he would have without Kenshin's guidance, but he still would have been strong. Somehow Sanosuke flourished in that world of rough, abusive slave boys, through the constant hard work and even the creative punishments issued by the Master of the House. It seemed good nourishment to such a coarse seed as Sano, and he bloomed as no one else could in one of the harshest of all places for any childhood to be endured.

The Master of the House kept between thirty and forty boys at a time. The Wall was enough to keep them contained. Though there was a legend or two of a boy some time past that had found a tree close enough to the Wall that he could climb it and escape, seldom did anyone attempt it. The walls were too high, the one gate too mighty, and the truth of wolves and bears that lived in the wilderness one had to pass through before ever reaching civilization was as solid as the Wall itself. They stayed within the wall, worked the farm and cared for the animals, and served the Master.

The Master of the House was well schooled in the nature of control. Boys who didn't work didn't eat. The Master—who was the only one who had keys to all of the locks on the gate—sometimes left the Mountain to buy supplies. Material for clothing, sewing needles, new bowls or cooking pots, and tools that made work in the fields go easier. If he brought back foodstuffs, it might have been a cache of sweet fruit for himself or a cone of salt. Otherwise, the boys were entirely self-sufficient.

There were the fields to work, constant gardening. They tended pigs and fowl. The Master kept young hands at work, some sewing and mending, others about the natural chores of a household, scrubbing floors, polishing, laundry, sanding. The Wall was built over a branch of the river that flowed through grates built under wall from wall, and there were always teams of boys ready with poles, hooks, and nets waiting to catch fish unfortunate enough to pass through.

There was plenty of work and they had just enough to eat and put back stores for the winter.

To a casual observer—had there ever been any—something might have seemed a little… _off_ …about the boys raised on the Mountain. The eye would see ordinary boys, dressed in ragged navy blue shirts and knee-length trousers and no shoes. They made plenty of noise as they went about their duties or, in spare time, played. They screamed, shrieked, cried out, grunted, growled, howled, barked, laughed, whistled, hummed and made all the sorts of noises boys did.

And if one contemplated this last moment for long enough, and kept an eye on the boys as hours passed, they would realize there was one noise these boys never made.

They never talked.

From dawn to dusk a collective muteness was spread out in the world behind the wall like a blanket. Not a word was spoken, not by the littlest boy, or by the eldest boy.

The boys were forbidden to speak, and many never even learned on their own. Only the Master of the House spoke, his words rendered flat by the mask he always wore, and his lips could never be seen. This was the reason why nearly every boy brought to the House was two or younger. Too young to speak, or only just having begun to learn. Most of the children could never learn to form words this way, and yet understood verbal language as it was directed at them by the Master.

Other boys, clever enough at mimicry that they figured out how to fit their lips and place their tongues to imitate word-sounds heard from the Master, were punished so severely that they would soon wish they had never owned tongues. The other boys would be punished with them also, food withheld for a week, and their nights to be spent outside in the snow or mud. They were taught in swift form not to _want_ to speak, and most learned this lesson when they were still toddlers.

It was this reason and one other that boys from the mountains sold so well when time came for the market. There was the dumbness, holding them valuable because, for some reason, many people seemed to think they could expect greater obedience from a servant who did not speak. The other reason was because boys raised on the mountain were literate, skilled in reading, writing, and ciphering. The same could not always be said for the free people raised away from the mountain. Literate slaves were eagerly bought by merchants, armies, and miners to help keep records and books. Mute slaves told no tales. Or so people would think, when they came to the slave markets.

Kenshin was different from the wards of the Master in that he fit into the slim margin of "very few exceptions". He was much older than two when he was brought to the House, and much older than fifteen when he was finally freed from it.

He was, in fact, ten years old when he was given to the Master of the House by villagers who had no means or desire to care for yet another orphan in their area. Kenshin seldom cared to talk about his life outside the walls, but Sano did find out over the years that Kenshin's parents had already died when he was seven and that, for a couple of years after they died, he had been raised by a different kind of master than the one who ruled the House. One who apprenticed him to the sword.

But then his sword-master died as well. Kenshin never said it that plainly, but it was written all over his face, and Sano also knew that on top of the death of his master was also the hurt that no one was left to protect him when strangers made profit in selling him.

It was a sad story. Probably every boy had a sad story, but the real sadness, Sano thought, was that Kenshin didn't have the mercy of being too young to remember his as nearly every other boy was.

Still, Kenshin wasn't one to dwell on the past or feel sorry for himself.

Over the generations, the fact that they did not speak did not negate a need to communicate for the boys of the House. And writing was too slow and cumbersome for some. So a unique and shockingly intricate hand language developed and flourished.

And this was Sano's native language.

To him it was natural, normal. Even long after he was gone from the mountain, after Kenshin had taught him to talk, sometimes they fell into their old ways. Drawing the words in the air with fluidity and grace. Kenshin had once remarked that it seemed impossible such a beautiful language could have been created by thousands of ragged children with grimy hands and hungry faces and ignorant minds…but it did.

 _Something good can come of even the worst things, if you look hard enough_ , Kenshin told him.

Sanosuke used to believe that.

* * *

There was another on the mountain that was like Kenshin. Another exception. Hajime was even older than Kenshin had been when he had been brought to the mountain. And like Kenshin, he was also not sold when he was fifteen.

Secretly, Sanosuke had always been deeply, deeply grateful that the Master was reluctant to sell Kenshin, and deeply, deeply resentful that the Master hadn't sold Hajime. The reasons for their being kept were simple but maybe more unfortunate than the other boys. What did another boy living on the mountain expect, except to be sold into the military or purchased for labor or—for the very unfortunate—pleasure? It was not exactly a life to look forward to, but there was always hope. Even the lowest slave could rise to be better than he was, right?

But Hajime and Kenshin were "rented". Hajime, tall and long-boned, with glowing yellow eyes and wolfish features only had one thing in common with Kenshin: he had had combat training in his former life before he came to the mountain and he was talented in it. Although Hajime was as much a constant in Sanosuke's childhood as Kenshin or the Master, he was about as forthcoming as a rock. Sano would never know his past, how it was he could do the things he could do, or the passions that drove him. Or even why Hajime stayed on the mountain and allowed himself to be exploited by the Master and the people who rented him.

But then, perhaps that wasn't such a mystery. The Master of the House, he understood how to control others. He knew how to build a cage that would keep his subjects, even if it had no bars or walls. Perhaps he had another way of keeping Hajime in line.

Sanosuke always thought the Master _wanted_ to sell those two, but he couldn't seem to find anyone willing to pay the right kind of price for them. Instead, he made money off them by renting them to anyone who needed their kind of skill.

The first time Kenshin was taken outside the wall, Sanosuke was four. He was very tall for his age, but still a little boy, and all that he knew was that anyone who was taken beyond the wall was sold. He knew he would never see Kenshin again.

Wailing, he had attached himself to Kenshin's clothes, looking up at Kenshin's sad, worried face. Kenshin tried to talk to him, but hand-signing took eye contact that Sanosuke wasn't giving. Sano didn't want to know any last instructions or to be told goodbye.

The memory of that desperate, roiling fear would stay with Sanosuke for the rest of his life. It was nothing he would dwell on, but it was a lingering thing, never quite forgotten over the years.

He did not call Kenshin _brother_ out of the simple affection of a small child feeling kinship with an older boy he lived with, though that was part of it. He called him brother because it was as much the truth as if he had been born from the same womb. A child has the most and the purest love to give, if there was only someone to give it to. Most children had parents. Sanosuke only had Kenshin. Kenshin, who had dressed him and fed him when he was too young to do it himself. Kenshin, whose fiery presence protected Sano from the cruelty of the other boys before he was big enough to deal with it in his own way. Kenshin, who was gently affectionate with small hugs and pats on the head.

The thought of him being sold was unbearable.

But Sanosuke was too young to really understand what was happening. He didn't consider the fact that Kenshin was only thirteen, too young for the particular markets where the Master of the House liked to make his profits. He also didn't see the way Kenshin kept trying to tell him the Master was waiting by the gate, though Sano did remember the spike of fear when the robed, masked man stalked toward him with fast, long strides. There was a short, nine-tailed whip hooked to his belt, and in his two years on the mountain Sanosuke had already learned to fear it as any boy had.

This was also to be Sano's first clear memory of Hajime, who that day did both Sano and Kenshin a service. The long-boned, rough hand that hauled Sano up, tore his grip from Kenshin's clothes and dragged him into the lines of the smallest boys bound for the gardens for weeding was Hajime's. Kenshin hurried toward the Master to distract him, and Sano lost sight of his brother because of a crowd of taller heads. He did hear the gates shut, though, and it was only then that Hajime let him go and sauntered away without a word.

Sano didn't remember the three days that followed very well, except that he ran to where Kenshin kept his things. There were a couple of blankets, both of them patched and reinforced by Kenshin's clumsy, self-taught needlework. A few books borrowed from the House's thin and threadbare library, two of them full of children's stories, and one teaching handwriting. A few items of clothing. Shoes that were worn in the winter. When a boy was sold, the others would come and scavenge his things, but Sano would not allow it. He fought off boys twice his size, standing alone with bloody nose and bared baby teeth and swelling knuckles and countless bruises, but no one took any of Kenshin's things. He didn't leave even to get his share of food or to do his share of the work that would have earned it anyway. His hands shook with hunger and his body begged for water, but he was stubborn even against himself.

On the third day, the scavengers gave up on getting the extra blankets and clothing or even Kenshin's prime sleeping spot on the corner under the window. And that night of the third day, Kenshin was returned to the mountain.

He woke Sanosuke deep in the sleeping hours, where the small boy lay on the blankets and books he had been guarding. Kenshin was dressed strangely in fine fabric and wooden sandals, all too big for him, and strange scents clung to him, and there was a long shaft at his side that he set away in the shadows as he knelt by Sanosuke's side.

Sano cared for none of it, and he was too young to question whether what he saw was dream or reality. All that he knew was that his big brother, by some impossible miracle, had been returned to him. He clung to the weird, billowy clothes Kenshin was wearing, pressed his cheek against Kenshin's, finding the ordinary scent of him beyond the unidentifiable smells of the outside world. He cried a little, relief tumbling over the stubbornness, days of hunger having made him weak.

It is difficult for hand-signers to talk in the dark, so nothing was said. Kenshin held little Sano throughout the night, and the first thing Sanosuke knew the next day was being propped upward against Kenshin's narrow, solid chest while a cup of warm broth was pressed to his lips. He drank greedily, his small hands gripping Kenshin's around the cup. And everything was all right.

After that, Kenshin's duties at the House changed. Before, like all the other children he had been cycled about the fields, the laundry, fishing, looking after the pigs and fowl and such, but now he—like Hajime—was on permanent light duty.

"Light duty" was a term the Master used, and the hand gestures in the boy's language describing it weren't complimentary. When light duty was associated with Hajime, who had been on it for as long as Sano could remember, he understood it to simply mean that Hajime could eat at all mealtimes as usual, but only had to work if he felt like it.

Not every boy shared his opinion, but Sanosuke didn't envy anyone on "light duty." The boys kept in the east wing of the house were the ones who were meant for the brothels one day. They did no work at all. They were dressed in soft kimonos, were kept out of the sun, and their bodies were kept soft with warm, fragrant lotions. They were given the best foods, sweet fruit and honey and milk and nuts, things that Sano very seldom ever saw.

It was understandable, others resenting those who didn't work. Sometimes when Sanosuke himself was aching from constant work in the garden or covered with blood from the early winter pig slaughter, or standing knee-deep in the snow on the bank of the river, breaking the ice so that he could put in a line to tempt the fish beneath, he thought that he might not have minded being one of them for a moment, in their rooms full of roaring fires, sweet food, and warm baths.

Then he would remember the future in store for all of them, and knew it wouldn't be worth it. In the end, he wasn't paying much of a price at all to keep his masculinity, to keep a sense of pride even if he was never free.

Of course, to say that Hajime, the oldest person in the House save for the Master himself, didn't work was simply a point of being resentful for his seemingly easier lot. The truth was Hajime was a peacekeeper of sorts. He broke up fights, disbanded gangs, punished thieves, and generally meted out justice as he saw fit. It was difficult to resent Hajime, because it was unquestionably preferable to be disciplined by one of their own than to be punished by the Master of the House.

And yet, Sanosuke did resent Hajime.

He could never precisely understand the reason why. Part of him thought it was perhaps because of the way Kenshin and Hajime behaved toward each other. They were never exactly enemies. Indeed, they had no interaction with each other at all. It was almost as if they circled each other in the limited confines of their prison, avoiding each other in slow, unhurried motions. Never looking at each other or even acknowledging that the other existed.

Whenever Sano had asked his brother why this was, Kenshin would look a little wistful. _A swordsman knows another swordsman_ , was all he would say and that, Sanosuke had long ago decided in irritation, was actually less than knowing nothing at all.

Another basis for his feelings might have been on one of the early days when Kenshin would be taken from the mountain and Sano would have to fend for himself, Sano was set upon by older, stronger boys who roughed him up and took his dinner. It was Hajime, not Kenshin, who took Sanosuke into the privacy of the fowl shed and practiced knocking him down until Sanosuke learned to dodge, to duck, roll with the blows, and even block Hajime's hands.

It was hard to be grateful when your teacher was so wolfishly arrogant, never offered an ounce of praise, and left you in worse shape after a lesson than the bullies ever did.

But Sanosuke grew tough. Tougher than tough, he became as a piece of iron, durable in impossible ways. He never even took sick in the heavy, wet winters that were natural on the mountain. He became so strong that even the oldest boys grew to fear and respect him. There was nothing he liked more than a brawl with everyone against him to spread the odds more evenly.

Perhaps in the end, it bothered him that he just might have seemed to owe Hajime for some of his talents. It was also likely that, perhaps, Sanosuke had no option _but_ to feel resentful because Hajime was as sharp and hard as the fangs of a wolf, and there was nothing of him that could abide by such a tender sentiment as thankfulness.

Years passed by on the mountain with its simple routines. Because of his strength and durability, Sanosuke was pulled from the fields by the age of nine and ended up with heavier jobs like breaking and hauling rocks and splitting logs. The Master of the House more and more often chose him and a couple of the other boys to accompany him into the woods just outside of the Wall to help chop down trees and haul the wood back. Wood was always needed at the House for their cooking fires, to heat the Master's baths, to keep them warm because the cold season was long on the mountain, and also because the Master used a method of preserving meat by smoking it, a trick he had learned in the outside world.

Hajime and Kenshin were taken from the mountain more and more often as the years went by, and instead of becoming more accustomed to it, more assured that each time they left they would be returned, with each time it became more and more unbearable for Sano.

A fiercely-grinning man with his hair cut short against the style of the times and a stringed instrument on his back was the one who always came for Kenshin, on average once every two or three weeks. Kenshin would be gone for three or four days, and then returned. And with each time he seemed to become a little paler, a little quieter. Sanosuke, in his usual sleeping spot near Kenshin's, would wake sometimes in the darkest part of the night to feel his big brother rocking in his sleep, making very soft, pained-filled moans that were little more than strangled whispers of breath.

Back then, he was too young to put a name to it, but when he was older he came to understand better than he wanted to, a manifestation of the horror of a young boy who had to do things he couldn't live with.

These eerie night-moans stopped after a while, but the chipping away at Kenshin's spirit and soul continued. When he was older, Sanosuke came to understand that Kenshin had two ways to go when the things he had to do for the clan that rented him and used his skill. He could either let his duties turn him to the same madness that the fighting outside the Wall followed, become fierce and demon-like, become more like Hajime… or he could let the blood and madness wash over him, bending in it like the tender grass that grew at the bottom of the stream where the boys fished, standing still and floating silent under the current.

Sanosuke would also come to understand that it was himself who influenced Kenshin's decision not to herald the madness, to be like that tender grass. Because Sanosuke always ran to him, glad to see him, sharing his food, telling him stories, laughing with him, loving him, needing his approval and guidance. Kenshin let himself be worn ragged by the tide, because there was one thing far more important to him than himself, the little boy who called him Brother. Sanosuke.

The thought brought a blending of emotions. Pride and fierce love, mingling with a little embarrassment and fear. Pride and love, because Kenshin valued him, because of the way Kenshin might have twisted. Embarrassment, because the entire thing was too mushy and emotional. Fear, because of how worn and shredded Kenshin's heart seemed to become.

The years affected Hajime as well, though perhaps only someone who watched him as closely as Sano did would notice. Sano felt the seething darkness, the fierce—that was always the best way to describe Hajime, _fierce_ —quiet and patience, the thoughts so obviously locked away deep inside. Hajime's age was hard to guess, but he was not a boy, like the others. He was a man, maybe more similar to the age of the man who came for Kenshin every month. And this life that he knew outside the Wall was more of his choice than it was of Kenshin's. Hajime wanted to be out there, his purposes lay outside the Wall and the wars that came and went and began anew again like the cycle of the seasons.

Always Sano wondered, how was it Hajime was kept here? What did the Master use to keep Hajime returning when Sanosuke knew he could easily vanish into whatever skirmish he wanted to join and never have to return to the House again, where he was rounded in with the others like cattle and his very voice was held captive? How did the master keep Hajime enslaved?

Sano let it all go simply because he was accustomed to never having any answers. The years passed, and he kept growing stronger. He drew other boys, gaining friends and followers. He looked after the littlest boys, tried to give courage to those who came of age and had to leave the mountain. He was the strongest and the best at everything. Except for, of course, Kenshin or Hajime, but those two were deliberate outsiders. Sanosuke could simply be one of the boys.

Then one day, the unthinkable happened at last.

Someone bought Hajime.


End file.
